


Can You Show Me Where it Hurts?

by dorkilysoulless (custodian)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Camp Chitaqua, Comfort/Angst, Drug Use, Established Relationship, M/M, Open Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:49:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1593854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/custodian/pseuds/dorkilysoulless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Cas is waiting when Dean comes in, banged-up after the raid.  Dean can tell he’s not in good head -- Cas doesn’t really do sobriety these days except as an interesting experience between highs -- but he’s still capable of doing concern, especially where Dean is involved.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can You Show Me Where it Hurts?

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to 51stCenturyFox for her invaluable advice. Title and lyrics in the text are from "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd.

Cas is waiting when Dean comes in, banged-up after the raid. Dean can tell he’s not in good head -- Cas doesn’t really do sobriety these days except as an interesting experience between highs -- but he’s still capable of doing concern, especially where Dean is involved. 

“I heard on the radio,” Cas says, tugging Dean out of his coat and checking him over with his fingers to make sure all of his pieces are still there. Still connected. “I’m sorry.”

Dean lets Cas tangle them together and kisses him back. He’s still numb from the patrol -- a whole pack of Croats got the drop on them, and too many of his people are dead tonight -- but Cas gets to take care of him. It’s all Cas has left.

“What are you on right now?”

“Opium,” Cas says with a grin. “Jamie and Jesse had some. Traded it for that pair of boots that didn’t fit me. Haven’t had opium in a while. It’s pretty good.”

“Good,” Dean says, and kisses Cas on his forehead. “No booze tonight, okay? Gotta be careful with opiates.” 

Cas digs his fingers into the hem of Dean’s shirts, finds skin underneath. “I’m always careful.” 

“I know, babe.” He plays with the hair at the back of Cas’ neck. They’re still standing here in the dark, and Dean’s afraid to let go. “But I know you like it when I tell you.”

“Mm-hmm.” 

The angels didn’t just abandon Cas, or shut him out. They left him here to die.

Cas leads him to the bedroom and strips the bloody clothes off. There’s a bowl of water waiting, and a cloth, and a towel. Cas dips the cloth in the water, wrings it, adds a drop of castile soap and rubs the cloth together to fill the fibers with it. His hands are strong and gentle as he bathes Dean, starting at his shoulders and his back and his chest -- clean of everything but sweat -- and then down his legs and arms to his grimy, blood-caked fingernails. They’re an angel’s hands; they’re the hands of a man who used to work in AM radio. 

The ache in Dean’s chest grows as Cas works his hands clean. He’s aware that he’s weeping softly, but the disconnect is terrible. It’s a body reflex that does nothing to heal the real hurts. 

Cas sits Dean down on the bed and wraps around him, holding him while he breaks. Dean lets himself be held, rocked like a child while he cries everything out that he can while Cas sings quietly into his hair. 

_“There is no pain, you are receding. A distant ship smoke on the horizon. You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying...”_

Dean clutches on to Cas’ shirt, climbs up him until he can meet Cas’ mouth with his own. He shifts so that he doesn’t need the shirt to balance, then strips if off of Cas and lets it drop to the floor. 

“You good for this tonight?” Dean asks, cupping Cas’ face so he has to look him in the eye. 

Cas is pretty glassy-eyed, but he nods. “Can’t top, though. My dick and opiates? Not a great combo.”

“S’okay. I was gonna.”

“Good.” Cas smiles. A genuine one, not a desperate one. 

Dean rolls, reaches under the bed for the things that are just theirs while Cas gets out of his pants. Neither of them is faithful. Cas does his guru orgy shit. Dean’s fucking his way through the camp, slowly but surely, messing things up and breaking hearts. Fact is, though, they all are. Camp Chitaqua: come for the guns, stay for the drama. 

He can tell, as he opens Cas up with his fingers, that Jamie and Jesse probably got more than a pair of boots tonight for their opium. He doesn’t care. That doesn’t make Cas any less his, or him any less Castiel’s. 

“This good?” 

“Ready when you are,” Cas murmurs into a pillow, already sounding pretty blissed out. 

Dean spoons up behind him and goes in slow, holds him close. He’s also the only one Cas lets in without a condom because they’ve given up on distance and definitions and settled on being whatever the other one needs. It’s not the way relationships are supposed to work, but Apocalypses have consequences. Even good things are fucked up these days.

“Still good?”

“So good.” Cas loves to be touched, loves to get fucked, and being stoned is just going to make everything that’s good for him better and brighter. 

Hell, sometimes that’s the only reason Dean wants to fuck him; it’s a chance to make something worthwhile in the world, and the joy on Cas’ face is real when Dean is touching him.

_“Thank you,”_ he murmurs into the back of Cas’ neck with every move of his hips. _“Thank you, Cas. Thank you. You’re so good to me. Thank you.”_

And maybe they’ve both got some tears in their eyes when Cas comes, only half-hard in Dean’s hand. After Dean comes they crawl under the blanket together and hang on to each other so tight that Dean’s arms are shaking by the time Cas has to get up to piss and clean himself up. When Cas comes back it’s Dean’s turn to hold Cas and stroke his back while he cries because silence on angel radio in the middle of a burning world is worse than anything Hell could have dreamed up. 

They don’t ever say “I love you” to each other because it’s cheap, and it’s what they say to everyone else in the camp when they fuck around because making miserable people feel special is a kindness and good for morale.

Dean wipes Cas’ cheek dry with his thumb. 

_You deserved to be saved, too._

At least they fell together.


End file.
